The Blog Squad: Part 22

Friday, 25 August 2017

We are a group of three book bloggers situated on different continents but brought together by our love for books and a penchant for talking about them. We’ve joined our forces to create a collaborative series of posts about book blogging and we hope you’ll enjoy the discussions.

If there are books being released by a favourite author I will read them as they are released because I won’t be able to hold myself back. Then there are the series that I just haven’t managed to get to that I’ll end up binge reading either all of the series or to whatever book has been released.

There are numerous reasons that I might not have gotten to a series - either the hype was too strong and I avoided it for too long, or I just don’t have the time in my reading schedule (because let’s face it I will NEVER have enough time to read all the books I want to read!) or maybe an amazing series somehow just slipped under my radar.

I’m not sure which type of reading I prefer - obviously I love binge reading a series because I happen to be able to get all the books without waiting forever to resolve a cliffhanger… But there’s something to be said about that delicious anticipation of the next instalment to a favourite series.

That totally depends! Sometimes I find out about some awesome series only after the entire series has been released so depending upon how much I like book 1, I might binge read or get to each book leisurely. Sometimes with some really popular series, you can’t not know about; I end up picking up the book as soon as it releases or requesting for an ARC.
I think both have pros and cons. Sometimes binge reading a series can put me in a reading slump and sometimes reading books right when they release is also a problem as I forget certain events in the previous book! But I just thought about it and I realize I don’t binge read that often!

In what order do you read series with novellas?

My favourite is to read all of the novels and then go back to fill in with the novellas, but if I am awaiting for new releases in a series then I might read the novellas as they are published. I don’t like reading out of publication order though, so if 1.5 was published after book 2 then I’ll wait to read 1, 2 and then 1.5 both to avoid spoilers but also more importantly to read the books in the order that the author intended them to be read.

I mostly read the novellas after I’ve read the whole series. For some reasons, I’m scared of picking up novellas in the middle. I like not knowing certain things during the series and having them be revealed to me afterwards. Reading them while I’m reading the series feels like I’m giving myself spoilers! I think only once or twice have I read novellas while I was in the middle of the series.

Do you do 'book by book' reviews or whole series reviews?

I generally do book by book reviews. Both can be quite tricky though! I don’t like to include spoilers in my reviews and this can be tough on a long running series in which events and the plot in sequels hinge on circumstances set in the previous books!
Whole series reviews I find tough as well because if I’ve read all of the books there are certain points that I want to make about a particular book and I find that difficult to fit into an entire series review.

I’ve only done book by book reviews so far but I’ve been meaning to do a series review for some of my favorite series like Harry Potter, Vampire Academy and The Raven Cycle. I read Harry Potter and Vampire Academy way before I started blogging so I haven’t even written book by book reviews of them! And I believe writing a book by book series now would be difficult as I’ve read the entire series! So yeah, I plan start doing series reviews sometime in the near future.

We hope you’ve enjoyed Part 22 in our series of discussion posts! Please talk to us and let us know YOUR answers below. What do you think of our responses? If you have any specific questions you’d like us to address in the future, please let us know in the comments section below.

If I love the first book I usually read the rest immediately and in order, non stop. Hehe.. it's happened a few times. Only if I lov ethe whole story and the first book is crucial. I usually read the novellas AFTER finishing the main books. I don't know the reason for it, I just do it. It's easier to follow the whole story I think. I do both. Sometimes I review the whole series, other times a book at a time. If the whole books in the series available and I do love the stories, I usually read them without skipping and end up reviewing them as a series at the end but if it's an incomplete series, in which the latest one is not released yet, I usually review them per book. If all the books follow the same couple, I usually review them as a series. If they follow different couples, I do it per book.

Most of the time I like to wait until the whole series is out before I start the first book, because I am probably the least patient person ever. haha! I hate waiting to know what happens. I feel like there is something important I am going to forget.

I usually read the novellas after I've read the whole series, but lately I've been reading some series completely out of order so there may be no method to my madness. haha

I used to do only one book reviews on my blog but lately I've started to include series reviews because it frees up some space for other posts...and also it gives me a reason to binge read them all together. lol